Collegium Aquino
The Collegium Aquino is an extinct order of warriors from the era of the Butlerian Jihad. Description and History A human potential movement arising from the same era during and after the Butlerian Jihad as the Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild, the Collegium Aquino were an order dedicated to developing the human potential for warfare on every level. They trained the most the feared fighters of the Jihad, often sowing the seeds for legends about the (seemingly) superhuman warriors of the Jihad, which was sometimes due to developing untapped human potentials (pre-Jihad humans, long enslaved to machines, had a very limited understanding of human capabilities) but also as part of a deliberate strategy to make their enemies believe the same (see below). Pro-Jihad military forces, from the Ginaz Free Companies to the lost Order of Erewhon, benefited. Amitabh Singh Naraj, one of the legendary trainers of the Sardaukar, was rumored to be a disciple of the Collegium. Fighters with Collegium training fought on both sides of the Battle of Corrin, even as rumors flew that they were instrumental in orchestrating the final conflict between the hegemony of the Sardaukar and the Landsraad alliance. It would seem that they were less interested in the identity of the winner and more in a consolidation in power. After the rise of the Corrino, the Collegium fades from history. There is some speculation that like so many of the Human Potential movements of the age, they simply disintegrated, their purpose having been spent with the founding of the Galactic order they hoped to create. Other darker theories propose that, taking their philosophy to its extreme, they went underground and became a dark current running beneath the surface of Imperial history. Still others allege that the Bene Gesserit, knowing the Collegium was strongest in the public eye, crushed them from within, striking from the shadows and destroyed their rivals. For whatever reason, the order's homeworld, Rathain no longer appears on the Spacing Guild charts and is not reachable. Practices While very little record survives of the doctrines and practices of the Aquinoans, the name 'Psychomachy' (lit. 'Mind War') survives in several Jihad-era sources. From what can be gathered from these second-hand sources, the Collegium studied war from a perspective of outcomes. They focused on the desired actual outcome of the proposed war, whether it was on the opposing population or one's own and bent a sophisticated, subtle understanding of human psychology to obtaining that desire. Actual physical warfare was reputed to be the last resort of the Collegium, and even that was tailored to hammer home the 'message' and trigger the proper responses in the target population. As one fragment of what may be actual Psychomachy doctrine (as collected in the rare "Codex Aquino" from the Merovech collection on Sembou) states: "Essentially you overwhelm your enemy with argument. You seize control of all the means by which his government and populace process information to make up their minds and you adjust it so that those minds are made up as you desire." '' Although if legend be believed when their disciples did strike it was terrifyingly controlled but devestating and much of the earliest post-shield fighting doctrines were proposed by the Aquinoans. Their physical training was said to be nearly on-par with that of the Bene Gesserit of the era. At its height, its philosophy led it to be substantially involved in the various theatres in which Psychomachy had been deployed. Again, we quote the Codex: "''Therein lies the Achilles heel of Psychomachy. Invoking as it does the most intense emotions and commitments of its audiences, it must deliver the goods as they are judged 'by the target audiences'." the text's It is speculated that it was this involvement that left the Collegium, shaping and stabilizing the planets caught up in the wave of the Butlerian Jihad and the Rise of the Corrino that may have left it vulnerable to its enemies, although this can only be speculation. Some of the principles of Psychomachy are thought to have been preseved in many of the inner teachings of the Bene Gesserit, the Swordsmasters of Ginaz, the disciplines of the Sardaukar and, more recently, in the Weirding Way of the dreaded Fedaykin of Muad'Dib's Jihad. 'Strategos' was apparently a title used for a master of the Collegium. Category:Human Potential Category:Rathain Category:Butlerian Jihad